How to help people with depression and anxiety | Opinion
A pastor noticed that an elderly parishioner stopped attending his services. The parishioner obviously didn’t feel appreciated or loved anymore, so he just stopped coming.
The pastor thought carefully about this and paid the man a visit on a cold and snowy day. He knocked on the door. The man opened the door and they were greeted warmly, but no one said a word after that.
The man gestured for the pastor to take a chair and sit with him by the fire. After a while the pastor took the fire stick and began poking at the coals. He pushed a glowing ember away from the fire. They both sat and watched the coal lose its heat and finally die. A few minutes passed in silence. Then the pastor dragged the charcoal back to the edge of the fire, where they watched as it flared up and glowed again, adding warmth and sparkle to the pile. The vicar put down his pen, tipped his hat, walked to the door and walked out.
On the following Sabbath, the man returned to the congregation. The pastor greeted him by name and asked what brought him back. The man said, “Pastor, by the fire at my house, you gave the best sermon I’ve ever heard without saying a word.”
This story I heard recently ties directly to the epidemic of anxiety and depression in our world today, especially among our youth. Anxiety and depression often lead to isolation. The healing process is a one-way street. Anyone who notices the dying embers must grab it and bring it back into the fire. Those who are the dying embers must allow themselves to be authentic and be willing to be moved.
The question is how to begin this mission. One of the more obvious answers is to do like the pastor and not say a word – just listen and be there for one another.
In his new book Happy Mind, Happy Life, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10 rules for listening to others. These include: non-judgmental, being curious, accepting silence, listening actively without interruption, and having no particular attachment to the outcome of the conversation.
It’s also important to listen ourselves and to surround ourselves with people in select circles of trust, as Parker J. Palmer describes in his book A Hidden Wholeness. Not surprisingly, Palmer finds both the need for camaraderie and community in our journey and the ability to listen in silence to our inner voice. He writes “…We all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more dependable than anything we can get from any doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, or leader.”
It is important to become familiar with our inner voice. That’s what finding community is like. The journey to inner truth, Palmer says, is too arduous to undertake alone and too hidden to be traveled unaccompanied. It takes community to find the courage to venture into foreign lands – a new life of fulfillment.
Finding my inner voice requires peace for me. In my recent travels I have had the opportunity to compare the total chaos of a busy city with the utter tranquility of a remote lake. The city was a cacophony of noise with crowds of people swimming upstream like salmon. By the lake I could sit and hear myself breathing while gazing at the vast expanses of mountains and water. The stillness around me brought the peace I was looking for and my inner voice began to speak to me. The trusted friends who were with me were kind enough to watch me breathe without speaking until I was ready to reveal some of what my inner voice was telling me. I showed them the same courtesy. This turned into a wonderfully healing experience.
In all my research and lived experiences dealing with these issues, I have found a formula that works for me to reduce my anxiety and limit bouts of depression:
• Find a place of peaceful stillness without being too isolated; a space to hear the inner voice guiding your next steps.
• Be with trusted friends and family who can listen (sometimes without saying a word) and enjoy the warmth of their symbolic fires to keep the embers of hope alive.
• Practice the art of listening, figuratively reaching for the poker and collecting the dying embers to ignite hope.
Evolution requires reflection. I hope as we reflect on the story of the Dying Embers we will commit to being better listeners and discovering ways to be rekindled and helping others to rekindle too.
Steven A. Hitz is co-founder of Introduction of executives worldwide, a Utah-based nonprofit organization that provides young adults with tools for personal leadership and faith with participants from 72 countries. He is the author of Launching Leaders: An Empowering Journey for a New Generation and Entrepreneurial Foundations for Twenty and Thirty Somethings.